Many types of clothing, such as athletic shorts and sweat pants, use an elastic waistband in combination with a drawstring so that the garment can be worn by persons of different size. In most garments of this type, the elastic waistband and drawstring are incorporated into the garment in separate steps. First, the waistband is stretched and sewn to the garment. The second step involves forming a channel for the drawstring and then inserting the drawstring into the channel. The drawstring is inserted into the channel by inserting a flexible wire with a hook into the channel and pulling the drawstring through the channel. This technique is labor intensive and significantly increases production cost.
Recently, it has been proposed to form the drawstring as an integral part of the waistband in order to eliminate one step in the construction of garments. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,928 discloses an elastic band in which the draw cord is intermeshed with the thread of the elastic band. One disadvantage of this process is that it requires the knitting or weaving machine used to manufacture the bands to be specially set up before production of the composite waistband. Setting up the knitting and weaving machines can be a time-consuming process during which the machine is out of production. Once the knitting or weaving machine is properly set up to produce the composite waistband, the manufacturer will ordinarily produce a relatively large inventory of composite waistbands before switching production back to conventional elastic bands. Another disadvantage of this technique is that it requires the replacement of one or more elastomeric strands in the fabric and with the draw cord. This alters the elastic properties of the fabric band which may be undesirable.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,040,244, discloses a composite waistband and drawstring in which the drawstring is releasibly secured to the surface of the waistband by an adhesive. However, the manufacturer of this type of composite waistband requires the use of special manufacturing equipment to heat and cure the adhesive.